Crossroads Onlinehttps://emu.edu/now/crossroads
The alumni magazine of Eastern Mennonite UniversityThu, 12 Feb 2015 17:54:46 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.3My “portable computer” weighed 30 poundshttps://emu.edu/now/crossroads/2015/01/13/my-portable-computer-weighed-30-pounds/
https://emu.edu/now/crossroads/2015/01/13/my-portable-computer-weighed-30-pounds/#commentsTue, 13 Jan 2015 19:35:39 +0000http://emu.edu/now/crossroads/?p=2722In the mid-1980s, when Pat and I were executives in the denominational offices of the Mennonite Church, this advisory was issued about computers in our offices: “We do not anticipate any time in the future when having several computer workstations throughout the building will not be sufficient.” It was assumed that personnel could reserve a specific time slot to work at one of the publicly available stations. Administrators should almost never need to have access to a computer.

Within a year or two I was provided my first “personal” computer. It operated with “floppy” disks, its screen was about 5 inches wide, and it weighed more than 30 pounds. It was called a portable computer. Dutifully, most evenings I zipped it into a suitcase-sized cover and lugged it home.

Each of us, whether computer literate or not, are dependent on technology in all areas of our lives and on the skills of competent professionals who design systems, install networks, research hardware and software, and repair failures. Much of their work is behind the scenes (if not behind a firewall!) and we think of them when something does not work correctly. On the rare occasion of a malfunction we hardly know how to engage our routines.

As is the case for all universities these days, apart from institutional financial aid, our technology expenditures represent the single largest line item in EMU’s budget. Fortunately, many of the costs on a “per unit” basis have been declining even as total demands keep climbing. That first “portable” computer provided to me 30 years ago would cost more than $2000 in today’s dollars, but had less functionality than my iPod, which weighs about 3 ounces and fits into my pocket.

To be sure, there are serious spiritual, philosophical and psychological challenges to be pondered with the ubiquitous presence of technology in our society. During this academic year our “common read” book at EMU is The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Some of us have advocated taking a weekly “sabbatical” from email and the Internet!

This issue of Crossroads centers on the contributions of more than 200 EMU alumni who are IT (information technology) professionals. We can be quite certain that their undergraduate preparation in the liberal arts at EMU provided them with a framework for addressing exactly these questions.

David Brubaker ’03 (left) is senior IT project leader for the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Douglas Brunk ’86 is a software development director for Penn Medicine Academic Computing Service, the IT department for the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. (Photo by Jon Styer)

As a UNIX systems engineer at Virginia Tech, Josh Akers ’07 is charged with “provisioning” a few dozen “enterprise systems” at university, while also “administrating VMware infrastructure” and supporting operation of “Advanced Research Computing clusters.”

“Anyone in the field would know what I’m talking about,” said Akers, who majored in computer science at EMU.

But yes, people not in the field, he acknowledges, are often confused about what all this actually means – and increasingly so as computer systems grow ever more complex.

“Oftentimes they don’t know how important the job is until I get that 3 a.m. call,” he says. “I’m providing critical services, and they have to be running for our tens of thousands of faculty, staff and students to do what they need to be doing.”

He likens this sort of IT role, at or near the front lines of keeping the digital world humming along, to that of a referee: invisible when things are going well, in the hot seat when things suddenly aren’t. It’s not a complaint, it’s just the way things are. Akers, about halfway done with a master’s degree in information technology from Virginia Tech, loves the challenge of the work.

“A lot of people, when they graduate, don’t find a job that they like, or one in their field,” he said. “I’m blessed to have found both of those.”

Derek Buchanan ’97 is another computer-problem first responder, as a PC technician at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia. From the main help desk, Buchanan troubleshoots for faculty, staff and students. Forgotten passwords are their biggest bugaboo.

The job requires patience and the ability to handle people with different personalities and vastly different computer aptitudes. Some people top out at printing things and browsing the web, while others can pretty much fix any problem except in cases of major catastrophe. It generally breaks down along age-related lines. The younger the person, the more technologically proficient they’re likely to be.

The rapid pace of technological change that explains the generally age-correlated abilities of computer users on college campuses has all sorts of other implications for those colleges’ IT staffs.

Tracy Smith ’94 is director of infrastructure support services and administration at the University of Virginia, supervising several dozen people. (Photo by Kara Lofton)

“One of the big things for us is that students are coming with more and more devices,” said John Thomas ’89, chief information officer at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida (he calls it the BYOD, or bring-your-own-device phenomenon).

Based on wireless network usage, he estimates the average number of wireless-connected devices carried by students at Florida Southern at just below three. Figuring out how to accommodate and capitalize on that reality are some of the big-picture tasks that occupy Thomas’s time – things like enabling students to connect their tablets to classroom projectors, or rolling out a mobile version of an online class registration system.

In 2000, when Thomas began his current role, there wasn’t wireless Internet access on campus at all. He’s since overseen installation of about 650 wireless access points, at a college with fewer than 3,000 students.

An interesting wrinkle to that story stems from the fact that the college is home to the world’s largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. That means Thomas’s crews can’t just install a “network drop” any old most-convenient place. Rather, everything happens in consultation with architects who keep an eye out for the integrity of the buildings’ original design.

Wait a sec. Network drop? That’s the word for a wall socket that an Ethernet cable plugs into, and that’s exactly the kind of IT word that passes the non-IT world entirely by (a collection of others collected during interviews for this article: “central authentication system,” “portal,” and “migrating”). As one moves higher within a university’s IT organization, translating this sort of technobabble to the technoignorant becomes a more and more important skill.

“It is extremely difficult to use acronyms and concepts that people aren’t familiar with … We try to steer clear of it. We try to protect people from the worst of the details,” says Leslie Geary, class of ’90, a technical project manager with the University of California, Santa Cruz.

One of her roles is managing teams of up to a dozen people working on IT projects such as the recent rollout of an “enterprise web content management system” – an application that makes it easy for someone with basic computer skills to create and maintain their own websites – for the university’s administrative departments. Next up: a similar system for faculty and graduate students.

After transferring from EMU, Geary earned undergraduate degrees in philosophy and biochemistry at Santa Cruz. Computers were something she fell into by chance while later working in financial aid. As a manager in the IT department, responsible for ensuring “clients” – IT folks’ term for IT users they’re helping – are getting their needs met, she needs to understand the IT stuff, but doesn’t have to live and breathe its finest details.

“I’m not a programmer. I don’t know anything about networking. I do have some technical background, but for the most part, what’s important are the soft skills, the people skills,” she said. “People are just happy to have somebody talking IT in a non-technical way to them.”

As director of infrastructure support services and administration at the University of Virginia, Tracy Smith ’94, also bridges the divide between the worlds of IT workers and the people who depend on them.

“I’m a translator,” he said. “I help to translate technology into terms that anybody can understand. We also do a lot of listening.”

With several dozen people reporting to him, Smith oversees all IT troubleshooting at the university, from single-user glitches to massive, system-wide failures. He rarely gets involved in the technical details himself – nor does he feel he would be particularly adept at this.

“I wouldn’t make a good engineer, but I also wouldn’t be able to be something that requires a lot of right-brained power,” said Smith, who has found a foot-in-both-worlds niche he loves, helping technology at the university meet its users’ needs.

(Thomas and Smith both point out that good communication has to happen both ways; it can be very frustrating for help desk staff, for example, when they don’t get the clear, precise descriptions of problems necessary to solve them.)

In Philadelphia, Douglas Brunk ’86 is a software development director for Penn Medicine Academic Computing Service (the IT department for the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine). He oversees development of software for things as varied as medical student admissions tracking, management of test tubes in stockrooms, and tracking clinical research ongoing at the university.

“I enjoy bending computers to my will,” says Brunk, who studied education at EMU. “[But] oddly enough, working with people is the part I enjoy most.”

Take the clinical research. Healthcare workers collect huge amounts of data, primarily in ways designed to serve the goal of treating individual patients. Sometimes those protocols make it very difficult to use that data for another purpose, like in research examining the treatment of thousands of patients. Software solutions can and do help with that, but cooperation between the various groups of people involved is also critical. Clinical researchers might need to convince other medical colleagues to adopt new record-keeping procedures to advance the long-term goal of better treatments for individual patients.

“Technology can help with a problem, but it will rarely solve the whole problem,” says David Brubaker ’03, senior IT project leader for the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Whole-problem solutions require effort from people using that technology, which is why Brubaker spends very little of his time in front of a computer. He’s out and about, meeting with users, trying to figure out how the technology available to him and his team can best help the Wharton School accomplish its goals. (His responsibilities include, among others, online services offered to alumni, the IT budget, and technology that supports the school’s large alumni events that are held all over the world.)

This all relates directly to a broader point raised by many of the alumni interviewed for this article. Whether someone at a university is one of those technical folks who keeps things running behind the scenes, or an end user who doesn’t spare a thought for those technical folks until they can’t check their email, or a go-between who speaks the languages of both, they’re all playing part in the same broader university mission.

“Everything that we do ultimately is to help people grow, mature, learn and go out in society and be more productive,” says Kevin Strite ’95, project manager for the University of Notre Dame’s Office of Information Technology.

He oversees parts of various IT projects around campus, focused on lots of day-to-day details – things like estimating costs for classroom projectors in the university’s recently opened study-abroad facility in Rome, Italy. But in the sense that these seemingly mundane details – combined with the daily details of life at the help desk and in systems engineering and in software development and a thousand other places – support higher education’s larger goals of education and understanding and collective betterment, et cetera…. Yes, it all feels very worthwhile.

As a work-study student on EMU’s helpdesk in 1999, these were Jason Alderfer’s tools: “A telephone and a legal pad.”

A couple times a day, Alderfer or another work-study student would check the phone and write down the messages – who had called and what their problem was – and then either go fix the problem or relay the question to someone else.

Since then EMU has almost doubled its information systems personnel to 17 full-time employees who operate on three teams – “technology systems” headed by Alderfer ’00, “user services” headed by Jenni Piper ’92, and “student information systems,” which functions collaboratively.

Alderfer and Piper describe these teams as dealing with “everything from the network jack back,” “responsible for anything that plugs in,” and managing programs like myEMU and student records through EMU’s vendor-supplied software system, Jenzabar EX. EMU also has eight or so work-study students and a part-time evening helpdesk manager, Krysta Nyce ’14.

Remarkably, considering EMU’s liberal arts focus, all but two of the 17 full-time employees are alumni. Like Alderfer, most came to IT through their work-study position. “You come on and basically it’s like an apprenticeship where you learn by getting out there and solving problems that you haven’t seen before,” he said. “For people who enjoy learning that way it’s a great place.”

EMU’s diverse set of needs makes it a great place to learn, say several who have risen through the system. IS director Ben Beachy ’02 explained that the staff and administrators operate closest to IT corporate work, while students use the system much like one would use a home system, and faculty rely on technology as an important pedagogical tool. Each of these groups has different ways of using the networks and different requirements for smooth functioning.

One of the most challenging aspects of the EMU system is linking all the components so that one part of the system communicates well with another. There isn’t really a user manual about how to do this; solving IS problems often takes creativity, collaboration, and trial and error. “It’s an ongoing process,” Alderfer said. “Things are always in flux and require us to revisit or reinvent solutions.”

A recent priority for IS has been improving Internet speed, Beachy said. In a concentrated effort over the summer of 2014, IS tripled the amount of wireless access points in the dorms in order to increase bandwidth. “Eight years ago we just wanted to make sure everyone could get on with their one or two devices,” Beachy said. With students bringing up to seven devices each, though, the service in the dorms was no longer adequate.

When Jenni Piper was a freshman in 1988 there were only hall phones in the dormitories and no Internet connection. In fact, EMU had no personal computer technology at all until the year before, when the business computer lab received 18 “IBM type” computers with 2-5.25 inch disk drives. The dorms didn’t begin to become wired until 1995.

Almost 20 years later, IS has been heavily involved with the recent renovation of Roselawn and ongoing renovation of the Suter Science Center by overseeing and facilitating the installation of the wires, technology and resources necessary to provide an efficient technology system to the EMU community. IS staffers troubleshoot problems that may arise, install new technology into classrooms, and fix devices that suddenly don’t work the way they are supposed to. Despite the inevitable frustrations that accompany relying on and upgrading technology, IS staffers find that folks at EMU are understanding and patient as the IS teams work to fix things. “By and large people are very kind, supportive and appreciative of what we do here,” said Beachy.

That may be one reason why EMU IS employees stay so long. Beachy, Alderfer and Piper have been with IS for 13, 14 and 19 years respectively (Piper worked in other capacities at EMU for five years before joining the IS team in 1995). Others like Dan Marple and Marty King ’85 have been at EMU for similarly long tenures. “Everyone has made a choice to work here,” said Piper.

Alderfer agreed. “The reality in technology is that people who have good IT skills can make a lot of money in some places” (and no one pretends that EMU employees make the big bucks). “But,” added Alderfer, “for people who are motivated by service, who want to see their work go toward something larger, and have good technical skills, those kind of people enjoy working here and are successful.”

Women in information technology work in what is still, very much, a man’s world. However, there are pioneering women who navigate the computers, cables, and testosterone to work in this quickly developing field.

At EMU, there are four such women who work directly in the information systems department: Krista Nyce ’14, Becky Brenneman ’07, Jenni Piper ’92 and Alison D’Silva ’01, MA ’06 (conflict transformation).

Like all the information systems employees at EMU, the women came to IS from a variety of backgrounds for a variety of reasons. Nyce, a psychology graduate, began like many of the current IS employees – by working at the EMU helpdesk in a work-study position.

Brenneman, got into IS “by accident” over 30 years ago while working in a different capacity at EMU. She eventually left EMU to work as a programmer at the alumni-heavy company Jenzabar for 25 years (see p. 15) before returning to EMU to complete her undergraduate degree in 2007. Brenneman is the only female programmer at EMU, a status that she hopes to see changed in future years.

Piper also originally worked at EMU in another capacity, left for a few years, and then returned to take the position as the associate director of user services. For a long time Piper was the only female in IS at EMU until she was joined by D’Silva in 2009.

Piper, who is involved in hiring for IS, said she would like to see more females in the department, but that males are almost always the ones who apply for IS jobs.

“I would like to see more women in the field,” agreed Brenneman, “especially because it would be nice to have closer relationships with more of my colleagues.”

Until more females apply, though, these women are content to work in the collegial, supportive environment offered to EMU’s IS employees – regardless of gender.

Jack Rutt ’72 moved from a management role in the private sector to direct EMU’s information systems from 1999 to 2014. The changes he oversaw were extensive. Computer technology has grown to claim about 5% of EMU’s total budget. (Photo by Kara Lofton)

After graduating in 1972 as a psychology major from EMU, Jack Rutt got his first job in the business world at Goodville Mutual Casualty Company in New Holland, Pennsylvania.

Rutt initially earned $1.85 per hour as a trainee in underwriting. Three years later – at age 25 – he was named head of the automobile underwriting department, succeeding his mentor, a pastor who was transitioning to full-time ministry work.

Suddenly, Rutt was managing a department of about a dozen people, developing underwriting procedures for no-fault automobile insurance. “The job of an underwriter is to find people you don’t want to cover with insurance and to exclude them,” he now says wryly, by way of explaining why he decided not to make a career out of the position as his predecessor had done.

Goodville did, however, expose him to the workings and possibilities of computers – the company had an IBM mainframe that processed data that Rutt’s underwriters needed.

Next life stage: one of six owners and president of an office supply and furniture business. Through the 1980s, this new company, The Office Works, added a personal computers sales division and grew to have seven retail outlets in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Rutt found himself writing the software code that his company needed for inventory control, accounts receivable, and service-work orders. He worked on a mini-computer that was one of the first to challenge the dominance of IBM mainframe computers for small businesses.

Ironically, the only class Rutt had ever dropped at EMU was Fortran taught by Joe Mast, because the challenging class didn’t seem worth it when Rutt already had a full courseload. As a result, Rutt had to learn about computer technology the hard way – on the job.

Rutt and his partners sold their computer division to a national chain in 1990. Almost immediately, Rutt was recruited to be systems manager for a health maintenance organization affiliated with Blue Shield of Pennsylvania. There he supervised a small group of employees responsible for keeping three high-availability, multi-million dollar computer systems running. There, too, he earned the highest annual income of his lifetime.

That work continued until Beryl Brubaker, then vice-president of enrollment at EMU, contacted him to consider the role of information systems director at EMU, where Rutt’s two children were then undergrads. Feeling called, Rutt took a substantial pay cut to come to a place in December 1999 where stability was needed – he would be the third IS director in as many years.

The changes in EMU’s information systems since 1999 have been extensive. Computer technology now claims about 5% of EMU’s total budget. Key markers: the staff nearly doubled in size under Rutt’s leadership; about every seven years, the core networking infrastructure has been replaced; its student information system was converted in 2007-09 to a new operating platform.

In May 2014, Rutt handed over his departmental leadership to someone he had trained, Ben Beachy ’02 and stepped into a pre-retirement role of doing project management and communications facilitation for EMU’s building renovations.

Rutt is married to Gloria Short Rutt ’72, a schoolteacher for much of their married life. Their children are Eric Rutt ’01 and Megan Rutt Rosenwink ’02.

Matt Eshleman ’02 earned an MBA from Johns Hopkins while working for an IT group in D.C. serving non-profits, begun by Mennnonite volunteers. (Photo by Jon Styer)

Matt Eshleman ’02 began working for Community IT Innovators 13 years ago, during an internship for his Washington Study-Service Year (now Washington Community Scholar’s Center). From providing IT support at a nursing home and teaching computer classes, Eshleman rose through the ranks as a systems administrator, systems engineer, and team lead to his current role as chief technology officer.

His experience over the years made him a “confirmed urbanite” and affirmed his belief in sustainable and positive business practices. As an undergraduate at EMU, Eshleman says he wondered how to fulfill his desire to “do work that had a positive and meaningful impact in the world.” (His parents, Roger and Barbara Eshleman, worked for Mennonite Central Committee.)

Community IT Innovators was a good fit right away, he said. The company was only seven years from its founding in the basement of the Mennonite Voluntary Service house in Washington, D.C. Originally envisioned as the philanthropic arm of a small IT company responding to local non-profit needs, the division was so successful that it became an independent company in 2001.

“Community IT occupies a unique space of social enterprise with a service mindset,” said Eshleman, who also holds an MBA from Johns Hopkins University. “From the beginning, when it was still a new idea, this company paid attention to what they call the triple bottom line, which takes into account not just profit, but also people and the planet. Twenty-one years later, its success really shows that it is possible to do good work, care for your employees, and help to make the world a better place.”

The company, employee-owned with 40 staffers, provides IT services for approximately 120 social mission-oriented clients, ranging from advocacy groups such as Sojourners Magazine and the Land Trust Alliance, to international NGO’s Bread for the World and Lutheran World Relief.

]]>https://emu.edu/now/crossroads/2015/01/13/wcsc-internship-evolved-into-career/feed/0College work-study boosted learninghttps://emu.edu/now/crossroads/2015/01/13/college-work-study-boosted-learning/
https://emu.edu/now/crossroads/2015/01/13/college-work-study-boosted-learning/#commentsTue, 13 Jan 2015 17:58:17 +0000http://emu.edu/now/crossroads/?p=2703One summer in the mid-‘90s, EMU embarked on a project to run fiber optic and copper computer cables to most of campus, including the ‘Woods dorms around the quad. Much of the grunt work fell to a crew of students who spent the summer using hammer drills to bash holes for the cable conduit through the cinder block walls.

Among them was Daniel Zook ’97, who held a variety of work-study positions with EMU’s Information Systems department throughout his time on campus. The hands-on, practical learning that came along with those various jobs – from staffing a computer lab to working the help desk to pulling cables through the walls in Maplewood – was “much more valuable after graduation than any of the classes I took,” he recalls.

Troubleshooting as a help desk staffer was particularly relevant to his work since college, says Zook, now a systems administrator at Lehman Hardware in Kidron, Ohio (see photo, p. 59).

Another student on the wiring crew that summer was Mike Stoltzfus ’98. In addition to the hammer drill, he recalls using an even heavier-duty core drill that he stood on, pogo stick-like, to punch through the steel-reinforced concrete between floors. Stoltzfus now works as director of business affairs at Eastern Mennonite School, down the road from EMU (see story, pp. 26-27). His responsibilities include overseeing IT at the school, and he also looks back on his succession of Information Systems work-study positions as the most useful aspect of his college education.

“The time that I spent working in the IS department was far and away the most valuable aspect of my academic time at EMU,” he said. “That’s really where I felt like I got the skills and the knowledge I needed to be able to dive into the workforce when I graduated.”

]]>https://emu.edu/now/crossroads/2015/01/13/college-work-study-boosted-learning/feed/0The one and only John Fairfieldhttps://emu.edu/now/crossroads/2015/01/13/the-one-and-only-john-fairfield/
https://emu.edu/now/crossroads/2015/01/13/the-one-and-only-john-fairfield/#commentsTue, 13 Jan 2015 17:56:32 +0000http://emu.edu/now/crossroads/?p=2700

In the 1990s, when John Fairfield ’70 became the computer wizard behind the founding and growth of Rosetta Stone, he already had accumulated enough achievements to fill the curricula vitae of several highly successful people. He’s not finished, though. (Photo by Kara Lofton)

This is a man who spent much of 1970-71 in Belgium’s national library absorbing British computer research. He was learning French too in Brussels, so that he could use French to teach math, physics and economics at a Congolese mission school.

This is a man who lived with his wife in a mud hut for two years – so remote in the eastern Congo that they needed to fly there in a small plane over a tree canopy as thick as broccoli heads packed together.

This is a man who got into a grad program at Duke University almost immediately after applying – far past any published deadlines, just a month before classes began. An intellectually provocative paper won him admission.

This is a man who made the world-renowned Rosetta Stone language-learning system possible through his computer know-how and vision.

The life of John Fairfield ’70 could read like novel, if he chose to write it up.

Fairfield’s introduction to computers occurred during his 1968-69 year abroad at 400-year-old University of Marburg, where he was asked to use Fortran to do a linguistic analysis of Italian poetry. He would walk into Marburg’s computer center – with its massive mainframe attended by people in white lab coats – and hand in his punch cards for processing, then later retrieve reams of resulting printouts.

Back at Eastern Mennonite College in 1969-70, Fairfield presented his eclectic array of coursework to the dean, Ira Miller, and asked, “How do I graduate?” Fairfield didn’t have enough chemistry courses to be a chemistry major – he had tested out of some of them. He knew German fluently, but needed another language to be a language major (French would be learned the following year). So he and Miller settled on “natural science” as his major.

Jumping to Duke University, Fairfield continued to be an unorthodox student while working full-time. (He and wife Kathryn Stoltzfus ’70, who eventually became a Duke law student, had two children while they were both in grad school.) Duke’s fledgling computer science program relied heavily on faculty drawn from other fields – as was common during the birthing stage of computer academia. No Duke professor was involved in machine perception, the topic Fairfield decided to pursue, with or without their support.

“They kept saying, ‘Why don’t you do this or that?’ And I kept doing what interested me,” recalls Fairfield. “They didn’t know how to evaluate my work.”

Upon completing his not-understood dissertation, Fairfield had no assurance that the Duke faculty was going to grant him his PhD. He sent it to David Waltz, a renowned computer vision pioneer then at the University of Illinois, Urbana -Champaign, who grasped its importance. Waltz sent word back to Duke that he had granted PhDs for much less than what he saw in Fairfield’s work, and Fairfield got his doctorate.

Next came faculty appointments at James Madison University, where Fairfield remained for nearly 20 years, teaching all kinds of computer science courses, but especially relishing the 400-level research courses.

In 1992, Fairfield added his energy and talents to those of brother-in-laws Allen ’65 and Eugene ’72 Stoltzfus, plus Greg Keim, to give birth to a worldwide business now known simply as Rosetta Stone.

They built a team which created and integrated three forms of software: human interface code for language learning via browsers; speech recognition code; and code running the servers on the backend. As vice president of research and development Fairfield was a hands-on boss. “There were more keystrokes of mine in the software we were selling than anyone else’s.”

Fairfield retired in 2006 when the company was sold to financial investors. Fairfield then shifted his focus to envisioning and establishing EMU’s Center for Interfaith Engagement, where he remains active as a research fellow. He is the author of The Healer Messiah: Turning Enemies Into Trustworthy Opponents (April 2014, available at rruuaacchh.org).

In the late 1970s, says Dwight Wyse ’68, “I became convinced there was room for a business that could provide software to colleges and universities.” And so he started one, which was rolled into Jenzabar. (Photo by Michael Sheeler)

Fresh out of college, Dwight Wyse ’68 took a job as accounts payable clerk at Eastern Mennonite College about the time the school’s first computer arrived. The year was 1968, and the computer was a massive IBM 1130 that filled up an entire room in the new Science Center.

The computer, purchased with a federal grant, was for academic as well as administrative uses. Wyse, who was a business administration major, was fascinated with computers and found opportunities to work with them whenever he could. “I never had any formal computer training except for two weeks at IBM learning some basic RPG programming,” he said.

Later he attended numerous computer seminars and earned a master of business administration (MBA) degree from James Madison University. From 1974 to 1981, Wyse was EMC’s director of business affairs.

In 1979-80, he spent half of his sabbatical year at the Small College Consortium offices in Washington, D.C. “My role took me to 20-30 colleges, and I saw many of them struggling to integrate computers into their administrative operations,” he said. “EMC was really a leader in the field, and I became convinced there was room for a business that could provide software to colleges and universities.”

Back at EMC, Wyse convinced co-worker Mark Shank, who was computer services director at the time, to join him in starting a company. “With a minimal investment we formed Computer Management and Development Services (CMDS) in 1980 and went from there,” he said. Their first and only employee was Harvey Mast ’80, who stayed with the company through the merger and continues with Jenzabar until this day.

Wyse left EMC the following year to work full time for CMDS. It grew to 160 employees and around 200 customers in 45 states before Wyse sold it to Jenzabar in 2000. (See adjacent article.)

He gives credit to EMC/EMU and its professors and administrators for preparing him to create a business. In particular he points to Delbert Seitz ‘64, who taught Wyse in college and became his supervisor in the business office. Later Seitz was CMDS’s chief financial officer. Wyse also credits the many alumni who came to work at CMDS. “They made our visions and dreams a reality,” he said.

In 2002, Wyse and his son Derek started RecSoft, which produces Campwise software for summer camps and conference centers. “We help them do their registrations, take staff applications, provide donor tracking, book their facilities and schedule meals,” he said. They have about 250 customers.

In 2013 Derek took over the company, and Dwight now works for him. When will he retire? Answer: laughter.

Wyse is married to Sheryl King ’68, who worked for Harrisonburg Public Schools for 30 years as a first-grade teacher, principal and assistant superintendent.

Harvey Mast ‘80 and Mark Shank were key players in a predecessor to Jenzabar, Computer Management and Development Services. (Photo by Michael Sheeler)

It all started in a corner of EMU’s old administration building in 1980. Two employees began tinkering – on their own time − with ways for colleges and universities to manage their administrative affairs with a new technology called computers.

The employees – Dwight Wyse ‘68, the school’s director of business affairs, and Mark Shank, director of computer services − cobbled together a company they called Computer Management and Development Services (CMDS). Their first client was EMU; their first employee was Harvey Mast ‘80.

Mast, who shared with another student the distinction of being EMU’s first computer majors, recalls one of his first computer classes: “We built a very simple computer out of a Heathkit package and inputted information with an eight-button keyboard, one 8-bit character at a time.”

CMDS soon moved to a farmhouse on Virginia Avenue, which was eventually torn down to make room for the expansion of Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community (VMRC). In 1983 CMDS moved to a house next to Miller Cabinet Shop at the southwest edge of town and in 1986 to an office building on Virginia Avenue north of VMRC.

The company grew to 160 employees, providing software and services to nearly 300 customers in 45 states. CMDS became one of the nation’s leading developers of administrative software for colleges and universities, serving the offices of admissions, registration, alumni, development, financial aid and accounting. Its best-known software was TEAMS.

In 1999 CMDS built an imposing corporate office building, designed by architects LeRoy Troyer and Randy Seitz, on Technology Drive off Mt. Clinton Pike near North Main Street (U.S. Route 11).

In 2000 CMDS made the momentous decision to be acquired by a new Boston company named Jenzabar. Jenzabar also acquired three of CMDS’s competitors – Campus America of Knoxville, CARS of Cincinnati and Quodata of Hartford. CMDS and two of the other companies maintained their own buildings.

After the merger, there was a period of significant employee turnover. A number of the key players in CMDS, including Wyse, left or were laid off. The imposing CMDS building was now too big, and Jenzabar moved its Harrisonburg offices to the headquarters of a former technology firm nearby at 1401 Technology Dr.

Jenzabar supports more than 1,000 campuses in the United States and around the world. Some 20% of all U.S. colleges and universities use Jenzabar software. Among them is EMU.

“The core product EMU uses today is Jenzabar EX, the flagship student information system sold by Jenzabar,” said Jack Rutt ’72, EMU’s director of information systems from 1999 until last summer. “Several other systems which supplement the functionality of EX have been added over the years, including MyEMU and a retention management system.”

Added Ben Beachy ’02, MBA ’09, Rutt’s successor at EMU: “A longstanding rumor in our department is that EMU was customer number one of CMDS, but I’ve never seen the actual database record to verify that.”

Today, 35 years after the founding of CMDS, Shank and Mast are still with the company. Fifteen EMU alumni work for Jenzabar. About half of them pre-date the merger. One of them, Mark Showalter ’91, joined the day – May 1, 2000 − that the merger was announced.